Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

8 September

My nerves are fraying.

I'm afraid of:

• Hepititis
• Landmines
• Kids with guns
• Joseph Kony
• Etc.

My baby cousins have about a dozen toy guns.

"Pew! Pew pew!" they say.

Why is war such a tempting game? But that's a naive question to which I know the answer. Power. And feeling alive in the face of death. And feeling like a controller of death. And other reasons that I don't know.

I stole a stubbed-out cigarette from G's ashtray. It's got remnants of her lipstick and, I assume, caught in the filter, her spit & DNA. I did this because [redacted].

G's so impressive. She's raised four lovely, strong boys; she runs the whole, huge farm.


Earlier, perhaps intuiting the slight fraying of my nerves, Elizabeth offered me the hacked-off foot of a rabbit for good luck.

"Oh," I said. "No, thank you."

There are a bunch of bunnies in tiny crates behind the slaughter house awaiting their innevitable demise. Their fur is soft. I toyed with the idea of letting them free ("Run, little bunnies! Scatter & prosper!") and I thought of the book WATERSHIP DOWN. But of course I won't.


We had a really fun dinner tonight. Before dinner, Nico took me out to drive the tracteur. So cool! He's amazing at manouvering that thing. It's crazy that I'm legally allowed to drive cars and he's not.

We all teased and played at dinner. The boys grabbed my eau chaud and stuck ice-cubes into it. We chatted and laughed and it was lovely. I love them so much my heart hurts. I love them!

Giz is outside right now chosing which chickens will live & which will die in the morning slaughter.

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

7th September 2008

As I've said before, my cousin, in what is (to me) an astonishing act of [redacted]; and so I must remember to [redacted]. [Okay -- I know it may be strange for me to include segments from these redacted sections of my diary, but here is why I'm doing it: They're my secrets, my hidden cards, my laundry, so I'm not going to expose them -- BUT aren't everybody's secrets more or less the same? Where ever I've redacted one of my secrets, you should be able to fill in your own hidden thoughts and/or memories and keep reading smoothly.]

We're heading to a farm festival today. Racing harvesters! & mud! & tractors!

The harvester race was awesome. Harvesters are the size of small houses. They are bigger than West African huts. It was HILARIOUS to see them race. (Although all the smog i saw produced today probably sped up global warming by a good decade or so.)

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

6th -- Pissy-Poville/Rouen

Edouard & Jean cuddled up together watching Saturday morning Tom&Jerry --

I met my old friend Gwen in Rouen today for lunch. Gwen's mum lives in Portugal now & she & Gwen are road-tripping it up to the Netherlands to buy special fertilizers and seeds for her organic gardens, so they stopped off to see me. What perfect timing!

I hadn't seen Gwen in 2 years. She was in London when I was in The Gambia, in Liberia when I was in Vermont, & she's been in Portugal this summer since I've been in DC. We had a great time catching up, discussing West Africa as experienced by white girls, talking American politics and world economics. (We didn't quite have time to make it to the subject of boys, which is a pity!) We laughed about old times in DC. Some of my most relaxing memories are from when Gwen & I inhabited our old 'flat' (as Gwen says) at 5th & U NW. I'd come home from work as she was preparing for work, and we'd drink wine and watch Ali G or play Katamari on her PlayStation.

Gwen worked as a bouncer some nights at the Velvet Lounge. I'd join her for a few hours some nights to keep her comfortable &, just to mess with her, would show up wearing frilly pink skirts and lacy shirts. It's fun to be a bouncer in pink.


I got charged 51€ for something that in the States would have been $15. Merde. & I froze up and just paid it without question or protest. I can blame it on my nerves surrounding my upcoming voyqge, but I need to get tougher. And fast.

I'm sitting at a cafe now & they've just brought me a decaf cap absolutely COVERED in whipped creme.... I'm exhasted. Gwen, Gwen's mum, and I downed a bottle of wine at lunch (as well as a pizza each!)

Here in Rouen, the streets are cobbled and crowded. The houses are wooden & worn, with flower boxes at every window. The cathedrals are grand; one is still covered in pock-marks from WWII shelling.

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

5th September 2008

Spent last night hanging out with the little ones. Well -- Lulu's 16, but -- he'll always be 'little' to me, just as I am, I suppose, 'little' to Giz. Lucien's a cutie. Very sweet, very grown up, he cooked dinner for his small brothers and got them into bed.

Lulu & I discussed [redacted]. It was the first time he's been old enough to talk about that family drama with me. It was nice.

The boys climb all over me. Nico showed a special interest in all of my beaded Gambian bracelets, which made me really nervous, because [redacted]. It made it into a kind of a dance. He kept counting them (the bracelets) in French, and up to 10 in English.


I stayed awake way too long last night reading THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT. It's a hardback, and I'm trying to leave as many of those behind as I can. I've already unloaded many books, while still in DC. I couldn't even make it one block from my home towards the metro with them. When I stopped at the first cross-walk, my bags full of books didn't stop with me. They kept going. I ended up doing a front flip onto one of my suitcases. People stopped to help me. I burst into tears and hailed a cab.


[Long redacted section]. In conclusion, there are ways of making things invisible if you just don't acknowledge them. But it doesn't work forever. Look at Elizabeth's mother, my aunt Connie, and her cough.


Ha!!! I probably embarrised poor shy Lulu tonight photographing him as he played field hockey on the men's team of Rouen. But I don't apoligize. He's really good. And he's my little cousin. He's cute.

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

Dunno what the date is -- the 4th? September? I guess? At Pissy-Poville.

I slept 15 hrs last night & I'm still tired. If there was a sleeping event in the Olympics, I'd take gold. I slept on the airplanes. I even slept on the train to Rouen. It's just total chance that I woke up as we were pulling into the station.

"Ou est?" I asked.

Lucky I asked.


I finished the book THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie. It was great.

The boys are at school and Elizabeth and Arnold are looking to buy a new chicken de-featherer in Central France, so I'm alone on the farm today!


Drove Giz's car to Carrefor on the way to pick up les garçons from ecole. Had forgotten a bit how to drive a stick shift, but muscle memory returned quick enough.

Carrefor inside a big mall. Entered Sephora. Sephora calms me. Is the same the world over and is more pleasant than McDonald's.


I seem to be way shyer about speaking French than I've EVER been before. I bought myself socks and stud earrings (2 things I forgot to pack) & a sweater (it's COLD here!!!) & when I asked the cashier "Quel heur et il?" my knees went weak. I had to repeat myself a second time so that she could hear me.


That said, since everybody was out this afternoon, I did have to sell some chickens tout seule, & I had a long chat with the buyer in French about the merits of Obama in the upcoming US elections.... (Then he offered to sleep with me. SIGH.)

(At least it was all in French.)

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

3rd. 6 am -ish. (Paris time.)

Slept most of the way. Landed at CDG. Sun still not up.

9:30 am. Gare St. Lazare.

Missed my train to Rouen. By about 2 seconds. Litterally. I watched it...--

Sitting on bags on station floor. Drenched in sweat and freezing cold. Contemplating Judeo-Christian theory of body/soul seperation. My body does not feel very seperated from my soul at the moment. All I feel like is jello, a tired, tired mass of jello.

To Pissy-Poville. With the cousins and the chickens.

Hung out in the slaughter house. Got a lesson in chicken anatomy from Giz as we verbally dissected familial dramas. Helped Jean feed the chicks. Chirp chirp.

Excerpts from My Diary & E-mails, Pissy-Poville, France

2nd September 2008

The taxi driver who drove me to the airport asked me how long i'd been in DC.

"3 months," i said.
"so where's your home, then?" he said.
"...," I said. "DC, I guess."


My taxi driver also [redacted].


Late Afternoon, Minneapolis Airport

I had a caramel apple with chopped pecans & a small bag of cheez-its for dinner.

Mmm... yum.

This is what annoys me: People who stand still on moving walkways & on escalators.

This is what I read on my flight to the twin cities: BORN STANDING UP by Steve Martin. It was great.


On the Flight to France

The fat-free airplane brownie they gave me tasted like cigarettes.

My flight route is so funny. DC-Minniapolis-Paris-Amsterdam-Kampala. Zig-zag. Zig-zag. Zig-zagging across the ocean!

I don't suppose they sell [redacted] in the Amsterdam airport, do they?